Thursday, July 20, 2017

When I started this blog almost a decade ago, there wasn't another site that regularly focused on future planetary exploration. That has since changed, especially with regular postings by Jason Davis at the Planetary Society. At the same time, since I have become a professor, my time is more constrained.With these changes, I plan to make changes to this blog. First, I will do a weekly posting with links to good articles and blog posts on issues relevant to future planetary exploration. I intend for this to be similar to the excellent Ed's Up weekly collection of excellent news writing (you can subscribe at https://tinyletter.com/edyong209), except that I will post mine here rather than it being an email newsletter.I also plan to continue to write in-depth analyses about once a month (see the previous post on missions to Uranus and Neptune as an example). Right now, I'm working on a story about what we know about the missions proposed for the current New Frontiers competition. There's good information available on about half of them.

In the weekly updates, I may also write short updates of my own. This week, easily the biggest news is the cancellation of Space X's Red Dragon lander. The company make many claims about this lander (see, for example, here and here). I'm not surprised to see it cancelled. Developing a spacecraft that can land on rockets reliably is hard. NASA, which ultimately funds the development through its contracts with Space X, was skeptical about using this system to land astronauts. Without the terrestrial version, there isn't a Martian version. I recommend Eric Berger's story linked below for more background.

The first full summary of stories published on future planetary exploration will come next week. In the meantime, here's a link to three good stories from the past week.

The House of Representatives proposed $2.1 billion
for NASA's planetary science budget, which would be an all-time high.
Part of the increase would be used to start work on a new reconnaissance
and communications orbiter.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.